Army committed $6.5 trillion accounting fraud in one year according to IG’s office

The Defense Department’s Inspector General has released a report on the US Army’s accounting, which states that the Army had made $6.5 trillion in “improper adjustments” ($2.8T in one quarter!) to make its books look balanced though it could not account for where the funds had gone.

The IG report also blamed The Defense Financing Accounting Service (DFAS), saying it too made unjustified changes to numbers. For example, two DFAS computer systems showed different values of supplies for missiles and ammunition, the report noted – but rather than solving the disparity, DFAS personnel inserted a false “correction” to make the numbers match.

DFAS also could not make accurate year-end Army financial statements because more than 16,000 financial data files had vanished from its computer system. Faulty computer programming and employees’ inability to detect the flaw were at fault, the IG said.